The fifty years' duration of CNQ, a cause for considerable wonder and satisfaction with any magazine --- especially in Canada --- resonates more for me than most readers because I have connections to it that long predate the polished and intellectually stimulating magazine you read now.

I was around when it started as a four-page, cheaply mimeographed insert in a publication put out by the very young and illorganized Antiquarian Booksellers Association of Canada (ABAC). So young was the ABAC then, that most people --- even our members --- had to pause before saying "antiquarian" for fear of mispronouncing that neologism; another futile attempt by us used booksellers to grasp a bit of respectability, which of course didn't work.

But these were exciting times, for what we did have was ambition and determination, as did the generation of Canadian writers then surfacing. Anybody who reads Nick Mount's masterful account of the emergence of a real Canadian literature, Arrival: The Story of CanLit (Anansi, 2017), certainly the most important book yet published on Canadian literature, will get a sense of the excitement of being in Canada then. Expo '67 announced something about Canada to the world, and even if we didn't know what it was, the exuberance we felt infused everything; whether you were in the arts or, in our case, writing, publishing, or bookselling, you could taste the future.

Canadian Notes & Queries was founded by Bill Morley, the Special Collections Librarian at Queen's University. Morley was a true bookman, sitting on the board of the Bibliographic Society and every group or project relating to books. Consequently, he visited all the bookstores, especially Joseph Patrick Books, and was a good friend of the owner, Jerry Sherlock. Bill was one of the first important librarians I knew in my early days in the trade --- so early that I was as yet unaware how few real librarians --- genuine book lovers --- there were in Canada then.

One day, Bill came in to Joseph Patrick Books, where I was then serving my apprenticeship, to discuss his latest enthusiasm. He wanted to found a small journal where Canadian scholars could submit problems encountered in their research and share anecdotes of discoveries they had made. The idea was based on the British journal Notes & Queries, founded in 1849 (and still active today). He approached the book trade knowing how much time dealers spent researching books, in the hopes that scholars and booksellers could help each other in editing, distribution, cost-sharing, and in ensuring a wider circulation. He approached Jerry because Jerry was the most influential dealer in the country.

The result, the bilingual Canadian Notes & Queries, edited by Morley, would be issued in conjunction with ABAC's magazine, Abacus, which was edited by Peter Weinrich, the coproprietor of Blue Heron Books.

This went on until our journal failed. Peter Weinrich no doubt got sick of doing all that thankless work for a bunch of slobs who never contributed anything. For all their devotion to the past and supposed fealty to the importance of continuity, booksellers are notoriously bad at retaining or recording their own past. ABAC hardly has any early records, they've all been lost through sloppy carelessness.

Canadian Notes & Queries thus survived while Abacus disappeared, done in by indifference; unmourned and unremembered.

After I left Joseph Patrick's, I didn't see a lot of Morley because I was dealing in different areas: literature, travel, and general categories. I thought I hadn't learned much about Canadiana, but in fact I'd absorbed an enormous amount, I guess based on the principle that a young neophyte with little in his head is apt to absorb whatever is put in front of him. Thirty years later, I often found myself profiting from a strong sense of one of the most important aspects of books retained from Joseph Patrick's: rarity. I came to realize that, with deaths and retirements, I knew more about relative rarity than any other eastern dealer except for my old friend Patrick McGahern, who, by concentrating on Canadiana --- especially the Arctic --- had become the prime specialist in the east, rivalled only by a couple of western dealers.

(Although I now deal in early travel worldwide, I never got a taste for the Arctic, a subject collected worldwide. That our endless frozen expanses failed to arouse in me the thrill of adventure and discovery felt by those early travellers I attribute to my youthful hitchhiking across the country in January in only a business suit.)

Though I still saw Bill occasionally, and his enthusiasm was still infectious, most of my contact with him was through Canadian Notes & Queries (it was only later that it became known by its shortened form, CNQ). People really did send in anecdotes and questions, in French and English, a form of research --- and an entertaining one --- that seems quaint in these days of instant onIine bibliographic gratification.

But I still heard of Morley occasionally. I also knew Doug, (now George) Fetherling well in those days, so I wasn't surprised to learn he had bought the magazine from Bill. This was probably around the time Morley retired from Queen's. In his retirement, Bill took to touring, seeking books and archives for his many institutional friends, and we were all amused and pleased to hear he had married the important bibliographer Reg Watters' widow and that they scouted books together. The passion for books and the search for them unites people, and here were two very elderly book enthusiasts engaged in the hunt instead of sitting alone staring at the wall in some home, waiting to die. I know several similar cases of this and it's a beautiful thing to see.

Then, in the way one does with old clients and acquaintances when one hears nothing for a few years, I assumed Morley was dead. But then one day, a few years ago, I had a phone call from him out of the blue. Now well into his nineties --- and still pretty lively and enthusiastic --- he was living in a home somewhere, widowed again, and retired from scouting. Having read my memoir of the trade, he wanted to exchange tales of our mutual past and of our many common friends and acquaintances now sadly gone. We spoke for a long time, ending with promises of visits and more talks. But there were to be no more, as he died in December 2017, age ninety-seven. He was one of the good ones, who entered Canada's then sparse book world and left it better for their ideas and enthusiasms.

George Fetherling took CNQ in a much more literary direction. He published it sporadically for a few years before probably becoming too tired to continue. Writers, by my observation, seem to share a general enthusiasm for journals and reviews. Perhaps long periods spent in isolation draw them to the latter as a way of sharing ideas and working with their colleagues. Something, at any rate, compels them to constantly found new ones despite their awareness of how thankless and demanding publishing is, and how frequently these publications fail. Anyway, in 1997 he sold it to Tim and Ilke Inkster of The Porcupine's Quill. The Inksters owned it for some years, bringing in the redoubtable John Metcalf as editor, and making it even more literary in scope (the original queries and anecdotes were by then long forgotten) until no doubt they, too, became discouraged and sold it to the next live one to come along: Dan Wells of Biblioasis, a bookseller and a publisher of great vision and ambition.

Wells' guts and enthusiasm cause him to constantly take on new ideas and projects. Some of us believe this will make him a truly great Canadian publisher, maybe even superseding Jack McClelland. In any case, Wells, with John Metcalf as senior editor, dropped the ampersand and began referring to the journal as CNQ, returning the magazine to its roots by emphasizing even more CanLit and Canadian bookselling. This resulted in the only magazine of its kind in Canada and, as regards its book selling components, one of the very few anywhere in the English- speaking world focused not just on the creation of literature, but the selling of it. Metcalf devoted more and more of his time to discovering and editing a whole new band of Canadian writers, all while experiencing huge creative outbursts in his own work.

Dan Wells eventually relinquished editing to Alex Good, who took the helm for six years then passed the torch to Emily Donaldson, the current editor. It is now a very interesting read, beautifully designed by the graphic artist Seth, and truly meriting, the writer and past master of Massey College, John Faser's claim in the Toronto Star that "it is probably the best literary journal in Canada today." I agree wholeheartedly --- why doesn't the rest of Canada see that?

A few years ago, I subscribed to the Walrus. Aware of the many years of financial catastrophes its predecessor, Saturday Night, had suffered before it succumbed to Canadian cultural indifference, I felt I should support it. But I was forced to drop the Walrus after a couple of years: its attempts at popularity rendered it totally boring. I would thumb through an entire issue without finding a single article I wanted to read. My aim was to support Canadian culture, not mediocrity. Of course, some might say the problem is that Canadian culture is boring, but I don't believe it. I believe that Canadian literature is on a level with American literature circa the mid-nineteenth century, starting with Poe, Melville, and Hawthorne and progressing to James, Twain, and then the whole twentieth century. I believe our true Canadian literature lies in Richler and Munro and Gallant and many secondary but equally important writers. It is very exciting to see a national literature emerge before one's eyes and more so to be involved in one of the few literary journals fostering it. Goodbye Walrns, we don't need to sponsor boredom any more, we're growing the real thing.

By contrast, I read every issue of CNQ pretty well cover to cover, skipping only the odd review of a book I know I'll never read. That's high praise for a journal, I'd say, perhaps the highest an editor can get. Although once, our redoubtable Emily Donaldson, when I told her she had edited a piece of mine so well I couldn't tell where she'd touched it, replied "That's the greatest compliment you can give an editor." Maybe it is, but if so, reading a magazine cover to cover must surely be second, or close.

I always go to the end of CNQ first just to see if Stephen Fowler can come up with a more bizarre book to satirize than in the previous issue, illustrating both the unintended humour of the publishers and his own unique sense of the absurd, which make visits to his bookstore so fraught with adventure and discovery. Then I go directly to Brian Busby's The Dusty Bookcase, my second favourite column, where I never fail to learn arcana about Canadian books that would make me a lot of money if I were thirty years younger. But even now it fascinates me. Busby utilizes the ingenious researcher's ploy of actually reading the obscure early Canadian books he ferrets out. Two generations of us used booksellers who've been trying to sell those same books, usually unsuccessfully, for many years should try this sometime.

Only then do I turn to what I must admit is my favourite reading in every issue, the column by a cranky old bookseller, which so captivates me that I find myself reading it again and again. I never tire. This man, opinionated and cranky as he is, always stimulates me. Unlike Busby's column, I may not learn anything from it, but what pleasure it affords me! Anticipating the man's brilliant insights helps to make the long waits between issues of CNQ a bit more bearable. If only we could get more, I think, as I read it for the sixth time.

Subscribe today! And if you already have a subscription why not give one to a worthy friend? It really is the most stimulating literary journal in Canada. And FIFTY years! Amazing!

-David Mason